It can be somewhat intimidating to try reading scholarly articles; they are long, dense, and often use unfamiliar language. However, there are a few tricks to digesting this material. First, read the abstract, or summary, found at the top of the article to ensure it fits your needs. Then you can scan through the various parts of the article, focusing on the introduction and conclusion, to get a better sense of the contents. If indeed this is an article you want to use, then you can proceed to read carefully through. The PDFs to the left do a great job of explaining the best way to approach reading scholarly articles, as does this tutorial from the Online Writing Centre at Purdue University Libraries, and the video below.